Fable: The Return Chapter 47
Chapter 47 "Ladies and gentlemen!" Announcer Allen Murray shouted excitedly. "We are approaching hour three of this incredible showing of one-on-one blade-to-blade combat! I know most of you are still confused like I am as to how and why you're here, but to be honest I stopped complaining an hour and a half ago! After three hours, neither of the combatants have got a single scratch! Mad-Dog how are you taking all this in?" "It's alright, yea." Mad-Dog responded in his casual tone as usual. "I fought for three hours before too. I am a little impressed with the lack of cuts and all. We'll just 'ave to see what happens next." "Right you are, Mad-Dog!" The King's blade had become broken and dented after hours of onslaught by Queen's nameless destroyers. His flames licked the, no longer sharp, curvature of the sword weakly. "Surrender, Hero. You cannot hope to defeat me. Only one could defeat The Court, and that blood has run thin and weak since his reign." "It is my duty to defeat you, I must!" "Look at yourself, you can hardly stand with your own strength." "My weakness only drives me to fight harder, and stronger." Queen laughed at his rebuttal. "And this makes you believe you can defeat me?" "No. I believe I can defeat you because... because I am not the only one who has grown weak over the years." The King smirked. "How dare you! You dare to claim I have grown old and frail like some worthless human wretch?" Fire began to spout from the swirling eyes in Queen's mask. "Oh, but youthful Queen, you have been fighting this thin-blooded old worthless human for hours now... and I don't have a scratch on me." "Then come claim your demise, Hero!" "I insist, ladies first... darling." The King gave a low bow as Queen lit Gabrielle's hair aflame and charged. She swung her blades wildly in the vicious cause of decimating the human king. The light and dark weapons struck the burning blade with every attempt. Her scalp burned and started to decay into a charred skull; this only fed the fires of her fury. Wisps of solid shadow and blinding rays of light flew from her blades as she created a symphony of chaos; striking, spinning, mauling, and jabbing. The combined forces of the light and dark exploded and imploded on each other, creating a quake in the earth that shook the stands they fought upon. Creatures in the stands cried in fear, not able to leave their places by Queen's evil magic. The wisps and rays met one another, forming into one beautiful and deadly embrace that encircled the combatants. The king fell to a knee but continued to block Queen's blows. The embrace of light and dark stormed around them both, creating quakes in the earth and hurling up sand. The sand joined with the wind, forming a cyclone that held the fighters together in a tight circle. Light, dark, wind, sand, steel, and fire melded into one chaotic entity. With one great motion, Queen lifted her nameless blades and swung them down with all her might onto the King; his blade stopped their onslaught, holding them still in a powerful grapple of strength. "Give up, Hero! You cannot win this battle!" "I have never given up, and I shall not on this day!" The storm continued to swirl around them, even their screams could barley be heard. Allen took up his place as announcer again as the cyclone raged. "Ladies and Gentlemen, would you look at this spectacle! In all my years, alive and dead, of commentating I have never seen something quite like this! Mad-Dog, what do you have to say about this?" Mad-Dog for the first time seemed to be dumbfounded as to how to react. "Either my brain deteriorated in the ground or my memory is just bad from gettin' hit in the head so much... but I agree. I haven't seen nothin' like it before. I mean, we've all made a tornado before when the fightin' gets tough enough, but I ain't never made one with all that stuff in it." "Right you are my old friend! Er uh... I guess you made a good point. I think we are reaching the end of this incredible display here. i believe that we'll see the victor once this storm clears from the arena!" Inside the cyclone, the King stared deeply into the fiery eyes of Queen's mask. He looked deeply with passion, anger, strength... and sadness. "Do not look at me with a gaze of pity, mortal! You are the one who will perish this day!" "Gabrielle." "Your pathetic wife is no more, Hero. She has been fed to the Darkness." "I know you are still in there, hiding behind that mask." "She is dead! You will never see an ounce of her soul ever again!" "I see her in front of me now." "What do you mean?" "I can see you, my love, my Queen." "Stop that! your queen is gone! I am Queen now, Queen of Blades! I will rule Albion, and your blood will finally fall into the sand... ending the line for good." "I just want you to know... I'm sorry." "Enough of this! It is time Hero!" Queen withdrew her blades from the grapple and powered up for another strike. "Give in to the Darkness!" "I already have." At once, the children of The Crawler whom the King vanished crawled up from beneath the sand. He heard the Crawler's voice echo in his mind as their eyes opened with red flame and their claws became sharp once more. The lost sheep returns to the flock. No one ever leaves the Darkness behind! Feel the embrace of the children! Dead fingers talk! The children are here to play. The tissue tears, the tears burn, the burns blossom like dirty flowers on their skin! Do you feel the music flowing through your veins? Do you feel the Darkness around you? Do you feel the claws tearing at your chest? Scratch scratch scratch! Death beats its wings for you! Th king could see the Crawler's faces etched into his mind, he could feel the pain again that he had felt so long ago. "The Darkness took my wife from me... now it shall give her back." The King summoned the voice and the essence of the Crawler, "Children! Go, tear her asunder! Do it for your father! Do it for The Darkness!" The Children of The Darkness flew from beneath the ground and from out of the King's body. They swarmed Queen and began to violently claw and rip at the mask. Queen swung wildly at the shades but there were far too many for her blades to reach. The cyclone began to dissipate as Queen fell to her knees; she was held there by many dark shadows. Their claws dug deep into her skin and they gripped the mask firmly. "You have not bested me, Hero! You will never defeat the Queen of Blades!" "Queen of Blades, like your brothers, your time has now come to leave this place. You have proven that you cannot be trusted to leave on your own and let Albion live in peace. You must be destroyed." "Nothing can destroy me. You may try with all your might, and you may think I am gone... but know this. I will return." "May that day be far from this time... and may you be ready to fail once more." The King of Albion took the white blade from Queen's grasp and lit it aflame. He lifted the sword high above his head. In one final moment, the Queen of Blades laughed at her doom, and then her laughter was silenced by the breaking of a mask. All around, the spectators that had been summoned disappeared; those who had been brought from other places were returned, and those who were brought from the dead were laid back to rest. The storm ended, The Children faded away in a gust of wind, and the Witchwood Arena evaporated before the King's eyes. He was returned to an empty Archon's Shrine holding a large white blade, a broken mask, and his wife's tattered body. Her eyes were open, staring lifeless back at him as if she had been alive again. He took peace in feeling that she saw him once more, that she saw him save her from the shadow that captured her. He brushed his hand over her eyes and closed them. With one flash of light and a howl of the wintry wind, she was gone. The King now raised his head up to look down the path before him. There he saw the Bronze Gate opened, and a pillar of flame rising above the elder gate. "Henry!"